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Classroom Journals

Penzu Classroom is designed to be used for education in the class. It was built for teachers to better manage their students and keep track of documents and assignments.

All you have to do is signup for a Penzu Classroom account (or upgrade from your existing Free or Pro accounts). Then create your first "Classroom Journal". This journal will have a unique class code which you share with your students. Then, in their own free Penzu accounts, students can add your Classroom Journal to their account simply by entering that code. Learn more on how they can do this here.

Classroom Journals have special features designed to make education easier and more fun. Read below for more on what you can do with Penzu Classroom!

Grade

We know that education wouldn't be as effective without the ability to grade and evaluate. So each entry that is submitted by a student can be graded by you, the teacher. Number (Percentage, Out of 10, Out of 20, GPA) and letter grades along with a custom comment will appear directly on the entry when complete  and it looks like your handwriting! The student's copy of the entry will be updated automatically. Students will also be notified via email once their work is graded.

Manage Students

Students must have Penzu accounts in order to join your class. Once they do, you can view all of the students in your class at a glance under the "Students" dropdown on your Entries page. Remove students or add more by sharing the class code with them.

Click on a student to filter entries and quickly find the work submitted by that particular student. Reading and grading work has never been so easy!

Inline Comments

If you want to leave feedback about a particular part of an entry, you can use inline commenting. Just select the text in question and click the comment button on the Format toolbar. You can enter a comment and instantly the student will be able to see it (by hovering or clicking).

Inline commenting allows you to give contextually specific feedback without disrupting the original entry. Students can see exactly where he or she did well or poorly. Perfect for all types of education and teaching.

Manage Entries

Penzu Classroom has a unique view when it comes to managing entries. Teachers are given an inbox-like entries list, allowing you to manage read and unread entries. When you have a large class with lots of entries to review, knowing which ones you've read is crucial.

Manually changing the state of the entry is easy: just click the dot next to the entry title!

Assignments

One of the greatest features of Penzu Classroom is Assignments. Teachers can create assignments for some or all students in a class. Each assignment can have a title, description, grading scheme, due date and time. Once an assignment is created, an "Instructions" entry is created that you can share with your students. They can even comment on that entry to initiate a discussion between you and/or the rest of the class.

Students will receive a notice via email that an assignment is ready and can start writing right away. The Instructions entry will also appear in their journals.

Tag

Penzu Classroom offers a great way to group and organize your students' entries: Tags. Effortlessly keep track of multiple entries by assigning a common tag.

For example, if students have submitted various types of work (like long essays, journal entries, and creative writing), use tags to group them together and easily find them later.

In App Notifications

Another unique feature to Penzu Classroom is In App Notifications. While you journal, there's no need to continuously be checking your mail anymore. If you receive a new entry from a student, a new comment, or an entry has been edited or updated in any way, a red notice will appear on your Journals page and on the Entries tab.

Students also have this feature in their journals. So when you send them an assignment or entry, they will be notified not only by email, but also within the application itself.

Share With The Class

Just like you do in your class today, sharing other student work with the rest of the class is very easy in Classroom. With every entry you have the option of sharing to one or all students. The entry will appear in their Classroom Journal.

Using the comment feature, your students can then give feedback and discuss the entry in question. You can even make edits before sending it out, highlighting certain areas, commenting inline, etc. It truly is education at its best!